Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to a smart multi-card, and more particularly, to a smart multi-card containing information relating to multiple cards and which simplifies the user's ability to make payments, accumulate rewards, and authentication.
Discussion of the Background
As modern society has rapidly become information-based and credit-based after industrialization, the use of credit cards, which are referred to as “plastic money,” has increased to be as prevalent as cash. Accordingly, the number of credit cards carried by a regular adult has also significantly increased, and thus each person uses at least two or three cards, and in some cases, ten or more cards are held and used. Also, various rewards cards have been issued and are used as an essential marketing tool in most business to consumer (B2C)-based corporations, and are widely used to promote sales at small stores or shopping centers.
Accordingly, a large number of credit cards and reward cards are being issued and many are unnecessary and/or discarded, thereby generating unnecessary issuing costs and social costs. Furthermore, the reward cards or discount cards issued from individual stores may be utilized only when the consumer possesses such cards during their visits. This causes consumers to avoid use of these cards due to inconvenient and complex card management, and causes generation of unnecessary marketing costs to businesses.
For example, credit cards are generally considered to have better utilization than rewards cards. The average number of credit cards issued to each consumer increased to 4 in 2001, stopped increasing for a while after the credit card liquidity crisis, and then continued to increase to 4.9 in 2011. The total number of credit cards that has been issued reached approximately 122,130,000 in 2011.
However, the average number of cards that are actually used by each consumer is only 1.4 despite the increasing number of issued cards. As a result, most credit cards issued to each consumer become dormant, and about 20,000,000 or more cards (corresponding to about 40,000,000,000 Korean won or more) are being discarded. Considering that the above figure included various cash replacement cards including debit cards, check cards, cash cards, and prepaid cards or marketing cards such as rewards cards or discount cards, astronomical costs are being wasted on dormant or discarded cards.